[ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea.

[Richard Loosemore]

Lee Corbin wrote:
> I thought of a better analogy.  Regarding an extremely advanced AI, we
> can hope that the human race becomes to it  as an old photograph is to us,
> one merely kept around for sentimental reasons.
> 
> For just as you might keep a photograph of your great great grandfather,
> so might an AI (friendly or not) wish to maintain an infinitesimal record of
> its progenitors.
> 
> Lee

But this presupposes something that I do not think will happen:  that 
there will be a clear dividing line between us and these extremely 
advanced AIs, in the same way that there is currently a clear dividing 
line between us and our pets.

I have never subscribed to this idea:  it has always seemed a given that 
we will be able to move fluidly between our level of intelligence and 
that of these 'higher' creatures.

Likewise, I think they will be just as interested in pouring their 
consciousness back and forth between different vessels.  It will 
probably be one of the main activities of both ourselves and these 
superintelligences, to explore different sensoria, different powers of 
thought, different types of consciousness.  Who wouldn't want to be a 
cat for a day?  Who wouldn't occasionally want the simplicity of being 
humble gardener, free from all this knowledge about the universe that 
can sometimes get to be a burden?  Who wouldn't want to see the world 
again through the innocent eyes of a child, at least for while?  Who 
wouldn't want to put their accumulated adult memories aside 
occasionally, and experience the joy of discovering things again for the 
first time, perhaps in a different way each time?

I can see ways to do this, technically, and I see a way to understand 
consciousness itself that makes it seem perfectly feasible.

So I see a different analogy:  I see them and us really being the same, 
but with all of us able to put on different sets of clothes each day: 
each set of clothes being our choice of form for the day.


Richard Loosemore.